Well there was a spot of trouble – potential trouble more accurately – and I did get a call at about 1:30 am from a disconcerted Lady Katherine and Laruen who weren’t totally sure what to do about Clair and Alix being so friendly with the dancers in the club, or if they were sober, tipsy, drunk, or completely ‘faced. It was an adventure to go find them and persuade them to come home, but they were never in any real danger I don’t think. We also ran into Christian, who is a guy here at CMRS, who was also having some trouble wavering between going full on drinking and being sensible, but try as I might I could not talk him out of giving up the plan of ruin – mostly because Alix chose that moment to break away and run into the nearest club to avoid coming back with us (which prompted me to attempt to retrieve her again). So that’s two more clubs I’ve been to in Oxford (yay?) and honestly, not impressed with the scene still.
The Purple Turtle, which is one of the more popular clubs among the CMRS crew because of its cheapness, is – I would say – the 10th circle of hell where Satan’s toilets seem to empty. It is underground and the building would be pretty interesting, if not for the fact that it was crowded on every inch of space with people sweating and spilling their drinks in an effort to get it on with anything that wanders past them. It is probably fine if you are drunk enough not to notice your surroundings anymore, which seems to be the case for most of the patrons.
There was some drama after we got back, which I cannot go into in detail without breeching the confidentiality barrier existent amongst friends. Suffice to say that, if people of mixed tendencies go out together and those general ideas clash it does produce some animosity and fallout if things become intense at any point and people who don’t anticipate those things tend to react strongly when they occur. Happily, things seem to already be on the mend and I don’t think any lasting damage to the peace and tranquility of the group will have resulted.
I was up until about 4am myself trying to be a good friend to everyone involved and bring the evening in to as soft a landing as I could contrive; thus, I slept in the next morning, but it was fine since the libraries are closed on Sunday anyway. That’s an important note for anyone coming here: do not plan to get your reading done on Sunday without checking opening hours of the library you are going to! Many of them are closed on Sunday - except St. Peter’s, which is all access all the time, though not staffed access during off hours.
Today is Monday and I am finding myself in a bit of a library crunch myself. I had forgotten that I have Colloquium today, which will fall right in the prime hours of library time between lunch and dinner at 4pm (/sigh) and as an added bonus I managed to order all my books to what might be the most inconvenient location in the Bodleian system: the special collections room at the Radcliffe Science Library. Not only is this building about 4 blocks removed from the main facilities, but they have special rules about bags and storage that required a £1 coin to operate the storage lockers, which of course I didn’t know to bring and didn’t have. So. Going back there after dinner I suppose and hopefully I can crunch what I estimated to be 6 hours of reading into about 3… huzzah.
YOU CAN DO IT!
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